I had some plums that were getting too ripe. I used them in this recipe to make the plum pudding. The plums that I used were about 3 inches in diameter. I used red plums. I followed the directions on the recipe and made some adjustments as were suggested in some of the reviews. I cut back on the sugar when cooking the plums with the tapioca. After it was cooked, I tasted the juice and thought it needed a bit more sugar. In all I probably used 3/4 cup of sugar in the plum mixture. The plums that I had were quite tart and may have been the reason I felt like it needed more sugar.
It was suggested to cut the temperature in the oven by Kelinwa when baking the baking mix topping. I cut my oven temperature to 400 degrees and baked it for the recommended time. It was perfect, the topping was brown and just perfect. My husband and I both loved it. There was plenty of juice in it for me, and plenty of sugar in it for him:) Great recipe,I will definitely use this recipe again, thanks for sharing.
Cathy

Reviewer:

Not a "plum pudding" in the English sense, which is more of a cake. In traditional plum pudding, the "plum" is dried raisins. Oh, those crazy Brits! Gotta love em. This is a plum cobbler and pretty good at that.

Reviewer:

I really love that recipe. Will make it for our next Thanksgiving dinner. I folow some members advice and reduce the temperature when cooking the top. I put down at 300 F for 22 min and add 5 minutes at 350 F to get the top brown a little bit. I also add 1/4 tsp of all spices and it was really tasty. Do it!

Reviewer:

very easy recipe to follow and tasty. A little on the sweet side for us so next time will omit the sugar. Also agree with another review that it needs to cook a little longer for the tapioca to do it's thicking thing. I also added a tsp of Epicure pumpkin pie spice just for a twist. next time will try their lemon chiffon. Different, easy and tasty what more can you ask for.

Reviewer:

We enjoyed the flavor of this dish, and I was happy to find a recipe to use some of the plums from our tree. I replaced the water with the liquid that was produced from the thawed, frozen plums. I cut the amount of sugar in half. I really wish, though, that the recipe would've specified the size of plums to use or given a weight. My plums were small, so I ended up with way too much biscuit topping for the amount of plums. I will know to use more plums next time.

Reviewer:

Because my nephews have allergies I made this recipe gluten and dairy free. I used a gluten free pancake mix for the top and instead of shortening used Earth Balance Soy free butter. The amount of water was too much, however, and I had to add more starch to thicken it. In place of regular milk I used rice milk and I must say you can't tell that anything was substituted for the original ingredients. Overall a fantastic recipe. I'd change the title to plum cobbler though!

Reviewer:

The fruit mixture needs to cook twice as long to become thicker. The baking mix topping also needs to cook twice as long. I also cut the sugar in half. All said and done, good flavor and raves from all.

Reviewer:

Very delicious and I will for sure be making this again! I used fresh plums that my neighbour picked for me (the little ones)Yummy! Since they were smallish I ended up using ~20. I cut the sugar down to 2/3 cup and it was plenty. I didn't have instant tapioca so I used what I had on hand - the pearl slow-cooking tapioca. Not a good idea as it didn't really cook through. I normally love tapioca and its a nice concept but I think next time I will omit that. I made a baking mix I found on this site (2 1/4 cup flour, 1 tbsp. baking powder, 3/4 tsp salt, 1/2 cup shortening. Mix dry indgredients, cut in shortening til crumbly.) Turned out wonderfully - except for the slightly chewy tapioca which was my fault!